A highly successful email marketing campaign is always dependent on who the target audience is. That is why as a business owner, building an email contact list should be intentional for your business.
These are people who have willingly shown interest in whatever you have to offer, making the risk of you being ignored or landing in SPAM boxes minimal.
Businesses most of the time prefer to build their social media networks without paying much attention to their email channels. Yes, Social Media has the potential of allowing you to reach thousands of people, but the truth is, the more audience you want to reach with social media, the more you would have to pay with Sponsored Ads.
Meanwhile, Email marketing is not the same; you can reach everybody “interested” in knowing more about you, without having to change your budget.
According to DMA, every $1 invested in email marketing has an expected ROI of $42. It is therefore important to take advantage of several email contact list-building tactics to increase sales for your business.
Here is what you will find in this guide
- Introduction
- Email contact list building definitions
- Successful email list subscriptions tactics for your business
Introduction
Every weekend I receive at least one email from Neil Patel and Syed Balkhi on digital marketing strategies and WordPress hacks and tricks.
Just recently, I subscribed to receive email updates from Alex Garcia, a renowned content marketing professional, and I must say that man is brilliant with his marketing tips & breakdown every Tuesday.
There are several websites I willingly subscribe to for deals & updates every day because of the value it offers.
In other words, your prospects want to hear from you with your promos, news, and guides but you haven’t given them the right opportunity to give you their email addresses.
What is email contact list building?
Email contact list building is a technique used by businesses to collect the email addresses of visitors or prospects who land on their websites with the goal of later converting them to customers or loyal subscribers.
Email addresses are usually stored in a company database for future business communications with the visitor.
Why email list building is so important for your Business
- You have to build a contact list because you can’t always rely on organic traffic. Sometimes a change in Google’s ranking algorithm may adversely harm your site, in the process dropping your site ranking.
- Email is easily in your control – If you have one million engaged subscribers on your email database, that is one million free traffic you have control over.
- Price of social media – if you want to reach more audiences on social media, you have to always back it with a new budget.
- Building an email list helps you build relationships with prospects, in the process, nurture them to become long-lasting customers.
- Email Marketing is relatively cheaper as compared to other marketing channels.
5 Strategies to build an email list from scratch for free
1. CONTENT IS STILL KING
Bringing out good content for visitors to enjoy is the way to go when thinking about growing your mailing list. Readers love good content, and so does Google.
If you can write compelling articles, Google will put you in its high-ranking positions(SERP rank 1-3) for your webpage to be visible and drive high-quality traffic.
All visitors who land on your post will be convinced that your article is good and that they need to learn more from you, and in the process subscribe for updates.
Focus on creating rich content that users will enjoy so that when you tell them to subscribe to read more, they wouldn’t hesitate in giving out their email addresses.
2. POP-UP FORMS
Welcome popup forms are a great way to attract prospects to give out their email addresses. It is usually used to welcome visitors who land on your page for deals/promos that will make them give you their email addresses. Welcome popup forms usually appear on the landing page of a website.
Remember: this is an ad you are serving on your website to lure customers to give out their email addresses to you. To avoid it being canceled too soon as disruptive, let your copy be straightforward and include strong call-to-action words. ( subscribe now to get a free 20$ on your next purchase, get a copy of a free email marketing tactics ebook, etc.)
PROTIP: Because this ad will serve for a few seconds, use Google Analytics to understand the page customers usually land on first, and the maximum time customers stay on the page to gauge the right page and time to display.
3. COLLECT EMAILS ON PURCHASES OR SIGN-UPS
This is one of the smart ways to build your email contact list. As shoppers trust your site and give in their personal information to proceed with purchases or sign-ups, including an option for customers to subscribe to receive updates from you is a non-invasive way of encouraging customers to join your email subscription list. It is a simple and highly effective method of growing your mailing list.
4. OFFER INCENTIVES ON SIGNUPS
Customers love freebies. You can quickly increase your email list by giving out a visitor a reason to give out his/her email address to you.
According to a 2020 study by Statista, 88% of customers in the United States alone used coupons for shopping. This goes to prove that building a targeted email list can help skyrocket sales when freebies/incentives are being sent out to customers.
Incentives may not only come in coupons/ deals. Other forms of incentives used to lure customers to give out their emails may include:
- Free shipping for an online order
- Free ebook, app, or resources
- Free trials
- Online training course
- Promo codes and discounts
5. ADOPT A REFERRAL & LOYAL PROGRAM
This is a great way to increase the subscriber base for your business. Programs like these will bring in new subscribers and make existing ones loyal to your brand.
You can achieve this by allowing existing customers to use referral codes to invite new customers to sign up on your landing pages. Existing customers will get a discount or coupon each time a new person subscribes to your mailing list.
Final words
Email Marketing is a very profitable venture; According to DMA, for every $1 invested in email marketing, there is an ROI of $42. Meanwhile, a very successful email marketing strategy is dependent on a highly targeted audience.
Therefore building a targeted audience is the way to go in increasing sales for your business. There are several techniques and strategies businesses are using to build their email subscriber base that is not listed here.
However, as a small business, you need to start from somewhere. You are not going to start getting 1000 subscribers on the go, it may take months or years, but it’s a worthwhile journey.
Also, do stay away from buying a prebuilt email list from third-party vendors as this practice may be ineffective and also illegal according to GDPR.
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Happy email marketing!
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